Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Climate change is mainly caused by man’s activities, assessing the understanding of undergraduates about it is of utmost importance in order to make them responsible as future managers of this environmental menace. The study assessed the undergraduate students’ knowledge of the impact of climate change on agriculture, human’s health, the vulnerable, aquatic animals and the economy and examined their understanding about the causes of climate change as well as their sources of information about climate change. These were with the view to enlightening them and thereby making them advocate of improved and better environment. The study made use of descriptive survey research design. The sample comprised 1500 undergraduate students who were randomly selected from five universities from the southwestern Nigeria. The instrument is a questionnaire titled Impact of Climate Change Questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Result showed that the undergraduates’ level of literacy about the impact of climate change was high and that if not properly managed can have adverse effect on agriculture, human’s health, the vulnerable, aquatic animals and economy. Their major sources of information are television, radio, colleges/universities and friends. The study concluded that the knowledge of the undergraduate students about climate change is high and this could be harnessed to educate the general public about better usage of the environment so as to reduce man’s activities that induce environmental degradation. It recommends that government should establish policies that can help to reduce the activities that can increase negative impact of climate change.